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Our website has been designed to enable you to access the data you require in the most straightforward way possible.
We appreciate many of our users have specific requirements, so below we have listed answers to the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) about searching for data through the UK Data Service. If you cannot find the answer you are looking for, please contact our Helpdesk using our online help form.
Please visit our UK Data Service data catalogue.
You can search for studies by typing in a search term (words, a study number, year) in the search box.
You can use the tabs at the top of the results page to view the results divided into ‘Studies’, ‘ReShare studies’, ‘Series’ or ‘Variables’.
Select ‘Studies’ (default) to view the results divided into studies.
You can further refine the results by using the available filters on the left-hand side.
You can search for studies or series by typing in a search term (words, a study number, year) in the search box. The spaces between words are interpreted as AND.
You can also do complex searches using the Boolean operators OR, NOT.
You can perform an exact search by selecting the ‘Exact phrase search’ toggle below the search box.
Your search query is treated both as a free-text search (i.e. it will match occurrences of the words in the search to the most relevant catalogue records) and as a Keyword search.
Keywords are subject terms which have been used to index each study at the concept or variable level, and represent the concepts covered by that study. They have mainly been drawn from the European Language Social Science Thesaurus (ELSST).
Can be searched directly by typing ‘Keyword:’ into the search box, followed by the keyword in question in capital letters, for example Keyword:POVERTY.
The autosuggest menu will display possible terms and a list of ELSST keywords when you search.
You can also search by ESRC grant number in the following format. For example, ES/S012532/1.
For more information about how to formulate search queries, consult the ‘Search tips‘ in the data catalogue.
You can use filters to narrow down your search.
You can use the following filters on the left-hand side to refine your search:
Each filter has a description against it which you can view for more information by hovering over the question mark icon.
You cannot select all the filters items at once. Use the search bar to specify the aspect you are searching for and then refine using the filters.
Each study in our data catalogue is assigned one or more topics, which describe the overall subject areas of the study. The topic filter can be used to narrow the search or browse the data. The filter contains high-level topics only: labour and employment, demography (population, vital statistics and censuses); society and culture; economics; social stratification and groupings; health; education; social welfare policy and systems; housing and land use; transport and travel; science and technology; natural environment; politics; trade, industry and markets; history; psychology; media, communications and language; and law, crime and legal systems.
If you are looking for studies on a particular theme, you may also use our ‘Browse by theme’ categories on our data catalogue. Some of the major studies are grouped together by theme such as health, age, economics.
You may also use ELSST to search for data.
Please visit our help page ‘Using ELSST to search for data’.
To search for variables within studies you can go to the ‘Variables’ tab and enter a variable name. For example, ‘smoking age’.
You can further refine your results by filtering by ‘Series’ or ‘Study’.
If you click on a variable record, you will see the variable label, the study title and dataset where the variable appears.
For details of question text please click on the ‘Documentation’ tab within the study’s detailed information. You will find information about the study including survey questions and data dictionaries in the ‘data dictionaries’ file/s.
The ‘Variable and question bank’ has now been decommissioned since the variable search available within our new data catalogue replaces this functionality.
You can sort your results by using the options ‘Date of collection (newest)’, ‘Most recently updated/released’ or ‘Title’ (A-Z or Z-A). The default sort is by ‘Relevance’.
You can use the tabs at the top of the results page to view the results divided into ‘Studies’, ‘ReShare studies’, ‘Series’ or ‘Variables’.
You can further refine the results on each tab by using the available filters on the left-hand side.
Clicking on the title of a study or series takes you to the corresponding data catalogue record page, which provides you with:
Detailed information on the title, Study number, Access conditions, Persistent identifier, Data creator(s), Citation and copyright, Abstract, Main Topics, Topics, Coverage and methodology, Thesaurus search on keywords, Sponsors and contributors, Edition History, Datasets, Resources, Documentation, DOI (Digital Object Identifier) change log.
The catalogue record also shows the type of access the data owner has granted for the study.
Please visit section ‘Additional data resources’ on our data catalogue.
We can help users locate data from other archives in Europe and worldwide. We can also obtain data from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) in the USA for UK users.
You can find data for several key international series in the data catalogue. We also have a list of other worldwide data archives.
Note: To request data from ICPSR, use the ‘Special request’ option within a registered project in your UK Data Service account and contact us using our Helpdesk form.